


The Boiling Pot Is Never Watched

by kyburg



Category: Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Genre: Gen, flying under the radar, long build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 13:28:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8802727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyburg/pseuds/kyburg
Summary: In Valdemar, Heralds are Chosen by the Companions; it's as accepted as normal as breathing air, as predictable as knowing water is wet.  However, when a grove-born Companion does not follow a Chosen in death but instead begins a long wait claiming that it was necessary, when a Choosing finally happens, the surprise is not the who, but how.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [behind_the_trigger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/behind_the_trigger/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! Thank you for asking me to write a Valdemar story - it's not a work I've done stories in before, but it was so much fun! Hope you enjoy your story, and thanks for the thought-provoking prompt:
> 
> _"For this fandom, I'd kind of like to see something from the Companion's point of view. Whether an actual character in the fandom or your original character. The Companions are so interesting, but you hardly get anything from their perspective. Maybe not something in the explicit rating range for this fandom, but everything else is open as long as it isn't one of the two things above. :)"_
> 
> Your wish is my command. *^^*

He was tiny, when Jaila first noticed him. Nearly a babe in arms, clutching the sleeve of his father's robe as he was carried past Companion's Field on one of the many, many Feast Days when the families of students studying at the Collegium were allowed to visit. As the years turned, Jaila would discover he had a talented older sister in Healer's Greens and his whole family would visit often to see her. And by association, herself as well.

Jaila, thinking thoughts as long as the years that passed, often toyed with trying to remember a time when she might have been something other than a luminous white horse with more than sentience behind her thickly lashed blue eyes. Eyes that saw the world in more than one way, ears that heard more than she could let on - and an ability to listen to the thoughts of others, weigh the measure of their hearts as they decided and Chose who would be a Herald of Valdemar, and their Companion for life.

All while munching the pasture's grass, and perhaps a fallen apple or two. If Jaila could immediately remember anything of such a long ago time, it didn't change much for her in this very present now she lived in, without even a sire or dam to claim. Grove-born, they called it - and as the years kept turning, and others from the field Chose Heralds, Jaila did not. Jaila had Chosen once before, the Herald's name nearly lost to time, but not to her memory. She had taken every opportunity to mourn that loss acknowledging the completion of a long, successful and productive human life. Rare, indeed and Jaila had no motivation to rush into anything less with another Herald. She did not follow her Chosen for reasons only she knew, and kept close.

It wasn't for lack of trying, she had often tried to make them understand. She simply needed to wait.

Not even verbal yet, a mere morsel in his father's arms when she met him, but she had instantly known Gaffney would suit. Like most small children, he had been otherwise occupied and overwhelmed by the press and excitement, hungry and exhausted halfway through the day when his family had taken him home screaming at the top of his lungs. No, Jaila had not Chosen him then, but settled in to wait and see how he would develop.

She would not say why she had not Chosen - only that she had cause to be patient.

His was a glorious, beautiful soul, full of light and promise. Resilient, observant, diligent - all qualities she knew would serve any Herald well in Valdemar, or even beyond as his duties would take them. And kind, Sweet Havens - he would never allow her to come to harm, and she would want for nothing in his care.

Gaffney however, was as head-blind as a block of the densest stone ever milled - and as he grew, it did not improve. 

His would be the truly rarest of childhoods: uneventful. His family had many children but not too many, not affluent but not poor, neither ugly or striking beauties, and in their lessons, capable if uninspired students. Gaffney, however, was the one who tutored those who struggled with the teachings, chopped wood for the hearths and cleared the dishes away without being asked. He could be found feeding the horses those wisps of grass and hay just out of their reach on the other sides of fences, championing the littles when the carts and press of the crowd would bully them. All of it done with the mildest of temperament outwardly, but inwardly?

Jaila marveled at the way he could literally seethe inside with rage...and yet calm himself in the same moment. Alone in his own head, he couldn't know how rare that quality was, and having had no model to base his behavior on or compare it to, even more remarkable. It was as if he could simply sense the next steps and take them, with no prompting or leading necessary. He simply just knew. And if he erred, it was always on the side of kindness, tempering a healthy curiosity with a talent for listening well to the answers he asked for.

But the only voice Jaila could hear him speak was the one he spoke to her with out loud. She could know his heart, but even the counsel he kept with himself was largely unknowable to her.

That was what it was. By the time Gaffney had reached his majority, Jaila decided that in her heart of hearts he would gain nothing by allowing more time to pass. If he was what she wanted in her next Chosen, then Choose she must.

She just wasn't at all sure if he would actually know what was happening when she did it.

Locked inside his own head, isolated from his fellows, would having a heart's Companion even be welcomed? His life wasn't lacking, really. He seemed happy enough, if uninspired and frankly, boring.

She would remember the day, if not the date itself. A day in Spring, nearly Summer when the branches of all the trees were thickly covered in leaves and blossoms and while the weather had kept its own counsel, on that day the sun shone as brightly as she could have hoped.

A week later, and all of the students would be leaving to either tend fields or take up their positions and as always, Gaffney's family was in attendance as another one of his siblings finished their studies and took up a position in their family's firm. Gaffney himself wasn't due to finish for another year or so and with other siblings to take up the work, he had not been hurried through his studies.

Some years later, he would confess he had intentionally lingered near the Field, hoping to see her. He had become something of an expert, if only to himself, of identifying which Companion was which. With or without their Chosen, without wearing any tack or blanket, in a field of white horses of nearly identical confirmation and size. It had required a keen eye, a long memory and minute attention to detail, all things Jaila knew Gaffney had in abundance. What she hadn't known, at the time, was how well she had been completely sandbagged. Gaffney wasn't head-blind, far from it. He might have believed that to be the case, having been told as much since he could remember but the truth was something else indeed.

When the moment came, she found herself on the receiving end. In the end, much to her surprise, _Gaffney Chose her._

Nobody had known of Gaffney's particular Gift up to that point. When the histories and records were consulted, it appeared that while there were Talents akin to his, nobody up to his place in history had quite the mixture of shielding and misdirection that typified his Gift.

Gaffney was innately a master of obfuscation. To wit, he was able to repress, misdirect and just plain block any attempt to reach his mind so completely as to look to the user as an absence of ability.

When Jaila approached him and looked into his deep, dark hazel eyes, the ones with slivers of mossy green in them so familiar after watching them his entire life long, the last thing she had expected after the initial _***"YOU - "***_

Was an outpouring of _*"THERE - there **YOU ARE!*"**_ And then the psychic **grab** as her senses were drawn into the harbor of his heart, welcome and beloved all at once. _"No more waiting, no more hiding or wondering. I'm here, waiting - yes, Choose me! I am yours, and you are mine. Where nobody else can go, you may live in peace! Come, I've been preparing this place for you - will you accept it?"_

No, never would there be any aloneness, no separation or need - ever again. As patiently as Jaila had waited for him to grow into his majority, so too had he been waiting for Jaila to pick her time and place. He would never have insisted or influenced her decision but waited, preparing.

Jaila could not remember ever thinking about his Choosing without a wry sense of mirthful irony. No, it was known to the Collegium from that point that Gaffney had a Gift, but defining and explaining it? They left that to the Companions. Once Gaffney understood the concept of shielding - he had such shielding by what his Gift did unconsciously, to the point that being unshielded required the training - he found himself in demand as the preferred psychic damper for many diplomatic missions.

Gaffney and Jaila as a team found themselves up to their eyeballs in espionage, more often out of Whites than in them. Jaila found that being white was only the base for being any color required of the moment. She particularly favored being buckskin, with black hooves and stockings for however the short time the dyes would take. She learned to drop her eyes, they being the only thing they could not change the color of. And Gaffney, having been nearly invisible all his life in the midst of a good-sized, privileged family, leveraged it to the hilt. 

Merchants, thinking to cheat the common trader, found themselves on the 'business' end of one of the oldest merchant families of Valdemar. Squabbling factions discovered that the Herald who was on their side - wasn't - and had the solution to their issues with the best method of all. He was prepared to make his argument, in short - he was right, and as fair as the circumstances would allow. Jaila merely needed to be exercise her ability to know when to act - and when patience would win the day, employ it. Their life together was long, if eventful - their roles changing as Gaffney aged, from spry youngling to wise and perhaps not-so-aware oldster, better to ensnare their prey. When retirement finally came, it was after a lifetime of subterfuge for the Crown and Valdemar.

They did very well together. They did very well, indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> *WHEW* As always, once I finish one of these, I feel like taking a deep breath is in order. Thank you so much for reading, and comments are encouraged, cossetted and given good homes with hot cocoa and warm snuggies.


End file.
